https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/0 ... -patterns/
The article also makes some highly critical comments about Facebook's efforts to force users to retain facial recognition technology - making it unnecessarily hard for users to turn of facial recognition.
Very good article.
Facebook, Google and Microsoft are three tech companies that have been showing their users these pop-ups to ensure that they’re on the right side of European law. Now, privacy advocates have analysed these pop-ups and have reason to believe that the tech trio are playing subtle psychological tricks on users. They worry that these tech giants are guilty of using ‘dark patterns’ – design and language techniques that make it more likely that users will give up their privacy.
In the case of GDPR privacy notifications, Facebook and Google used a combination of aggressive language and inappropriate default selections to keep users feeding them personal data, the report alleges.
Facebook was equally flawed in its choices around facial recognition, which it has recently introduced in Europe after a six-year hiatus due to privacy concerns. It turns on this technology by default unless users actively turn it off, making them go through four more clicks than those that just leave it as-is.
The report had specific comments about this practice of making users jump through hoops to select the most privacy-friendly option:
If the aim is to lead users in a certain direction, making the process toward the alternatives a long and arduous process can be an effective dark pattern.
